Melissa asked her mom to borrow some money and told her she would pay her back with her next pay check. Her mother declined to give it to her. Feeling badly, her mother left her a note asking her to join her for a burger later at Bowling World

Melissa was hoping to become a dental hygienist.

Westark Community College/University Of Arkansas

She met her friend at Chick-fil-A which was just down the road from the college

She was employed part time as a dental assistant

When it was quitting time, her car wouldn’t start. She had accidentally left something on, and the battery was dead. A kind stranger came along and gave her a jump start. The police looked at the good Samaritan very closely before dismissing him as a suspect.

Missy had gone on home and changed her clothes, according to a neighbor who saw her come and go. 

She was running low on money, she was going to come out and have her mother buy her a hamburger. But she never made it inside.

Bowling World

Two people witness Melissa's abduction. A young boy, who was with his mother at Bowling World, said when he went out to retrieve a book from their car, he heard a woman scream, “Help me!” He didn’t see anyone but stated the time was around 6:30 or 6:40 p.m. Bowling World didn’t have security cameras in the parking lot, and though some convenience stores in the vicinity did have cameras, they were too far away from the crime scene to be useful.

Bowling World

Melissa drove a white 1995 Mitsubishi Mirage. The car shows signs of a struggle. A patron had discovered her car keys and turned them in the night Witt disappeared. Pools of blood were found in the lot. The only clues left at the scene were a gold hoop earring, a crushed hair clip, her car keys, and pools of blood. Missy's car was found at the bowling alley two days after she was reported missing. Her keys had been picked up and turned into the front desk of the bowling alley; they were found to have traces of blood on them.

A “strange” phone call made to police “a day or two” prior to the discovery of the body helps support this theory, he said. “I’ve always felt that the phone call was tied to what had happened,” Rider said. “At that time, we didn’t have Caller ID in the office; it was a voice recording on the machine we had at our Major Crimes Office. “On the voice message recording, a lady called and with a really strong Southern accent could be heard saying, ‘Go ahead and tell them what you found,’” he said. “There also was a younger male voice, also with a really strong Southern accent. I don’t recall exactly what the male voice said, but it was something like, ‘I can’t.’ And then he hung up the phone.”

She had been brutally murdered and left to die along a logging trail in the Ozark National Forest about 50 miles from where she was abducted. A trapper, looking for deer sign on A US Forest Service road about 18 miles north of Ozark, noticed Witt's nude body lying face down about 30 years from the road. The body was found on Forest Service Road 1551, located off Franklin County 111, also known as Jethro Road. Her body was placed near a headstone-like rock. Her clothing was missing from the crime scene, including her jeans, undergarments, purse, an earring, and her Mickey Mouse watch. She had been strangled to death and sexually assaulted.

Turner Bend Road

$20,000 reward for her safe return and $10,000 for the arrest and conviction of the person or persons involved in her disappearance.